HE took a tiny box out of HIS pocket and showed it to me.
‘What’s that?’
‘Some kind of after-the-fact contraception, apparently. I’ve never needed it, so I didn’t know what it was. My fence explained it to me.’
‘I wonder who uses it.’
‘People who do it a lot, or who have a lot of sperm on account of some weird metabolic quirk. Elderly perverts, probably. What’s wrong?’
‘Struggling to remember the last time I did it…’
‘If it was with me, we did it two years ago when we first met.’
‘So we did.’
‘Have you done it with someone else since?’
‘Come on, how often do you think I can do something like that? It’s exhausting.’
‘Sure, but… tiring yourself out isn’t so bad. You get that feeling of having really done something. Don’t you think it’s dull never wearing yourself out at all?’
‘Dunno.’
It seemed like something we ought to do. Might be that’s why we broke up for a year or so. We didn’t do it for such a long time that we started to lose ‘that loving feeling’. We were only seeing each other now because HE had appeared on television; my mother was one of the execs at the company that produced the programme. It was some staged show called The Psychoanalysis Room or something. When I called HIM and asked why HE’d gone on the show, he said, ‘I thought maybe if my mum saw it, she’d take pity and come find me.’ But there was no way HIS mother, who had vanished into thin air fifteen years ago, was ever going to recognize her son. HE was twenty-one years old now and appearing under an alias. That’s what I thought, anyway, but I didn’t say it out loud.
We went into a fast food joint. It proclaimed itself a ‘Gourmet Soupery’. What was gourmet about it, I couldn’t tell you. I got a little dizzy when I tried to lift the tray with our two bowls on it. Despite chiding HIM about HIS diet earlier, I realized I hadn’t eaten anything since yesterday myself. They were saying on the news that more and more young people were forgetting to eat, starving to death.
‘This feels kind of embarrassing somehow,’ I said as I picked up my spoon.
‘Uh-huh.’ HE nodded.
‘I’ve never eaten with someone else before.’
‘Me neither.’
We ate sitting side by side, gazing at the video screen. It’s so hard to relax without something to look at. The screen was showing a sunset over some southern island. The camera didn’t move, so it was pretty much like an ultravista. Once the sun had sunk fully behind the horizon, the programme changed to Top Forty This Week. That restaurant chain’s catchphrase is ‘Brand new videos, guaranteed.’
I stacked the bowls one inside the other and put them into the nearby bin.
‘How’s your girlfriend?’
‘Hm?’
‘The girl you were going out with after me.’
‘Haven’t seen her.’ ‘How come?’
HE furrowed HIS brow, then let out a sigh as if to say guess I’ve got no choice. ‘Her parents are still together.’
‘Don’t hear that too often.’
‘Maybe it’s that, or maybe it’s something else, but she has total faith in society. She’s so boisterous, always got too much energy… Hell, she’s even got aspirations.’
‘To marry you?’
‘To have children and stuff.’
‘Through IVF?’
‘Yeah. Not likely, right? Not with a physique like that.’
She was about 4’ 9” and 110 pounds. The average height for someone that weight is about 5’ 6”, men and women alike.
‘Anyway, that’s all I’m gonna say about it.’ Sighing again, HE returned HIS gaze to the screen.
What more could there be to say? Maybe she still had periods. I used to myself for two or three years when I was younger. Once I hit eighteen I started eating less and less, and then before I knew it I just wasn’t getting them anymore. I mean, no one’s going to like you if you have a classic woman’s figure (or a man’s). The only ones with any meat on their bones in this day and age are older people and pregnant women on a hospital diet.
HE was staring at the pop star on the screen. She was probably the one HE was truly in love with. I’ve got my own favourite celebrity as well, so I’m well aware that there’s no point in being jealous. It’s just an image, it’s not real—how can you compete with that? And, yet, the jealousy is there.
‘Did you vote for her in the last election?’ I mean, I had to be jealous, didn’t I? Since we’re still treating what we had (HIM and me) as a love affair. The instant I became aware of this sense of obligation, it started to feel stupid.
‘Yeah. So what?’
‘It’s idiotic, giving people the right to vote at the age of fifteen.’
‘Maybe so.’
‘And all this Let the future shine! The Number Whatever Election bullshit.’
‘Voter turnout’s gone up, though. Now that all you have to do is sit in front of your TV and press a button for your favourite celeb.’
‘But they don’t even publicly announce which politicians the celebrity delegates choose with the votes they get.’
‘No shit, Sherlock.’ HE shook HIS head. ‘Let’s get outta here.’
The streets were overflowing with the jobless. Sitting, standing, talking, strumming guitars.
‘How come there’re so many, I wonder.’ HIS mood seemed to have improved.
‘It’s Shinjuku.’
‘Why do they all gather in the same place, though. Even when they have to dodge the fare to get here.’
‘They come for the spectacle. To check each other out.’
The closer we got to the Koma Theater, the more of them there were. Two police patrol ships were flying overhead. They would periodically descend and play the same taped message over their loudspeakers: It is against the law to remain in the same place for more than twenty minutes. Please move along.
We got to the plaza and sat down side by side.
‘So what’s up?’ HE asked. There was nothing much else to talk about.
‘Nothing at all.’ I instantly started to get irritated.
‘Doing well?’
‘Well enough.’
‘How’s your mother?’
‘Good.’ How the hell did I get stuck with this moron? ‘You?’
‘Me? Yeah, I’m good.’
‘How’s your father?’
‘Lately it’s as though he’s just hit puberty.’ HE smiled faintly. ‘Spends a lot of time lost in thought.’
‘About what?’
‘I dunno, maybe he’s having a midlife crisis. Turning sixty and all.’ We both laughed. ‘No, seriously though, seems like he’s found love,’ HE added. ‘Old people have so much energy, you know? It seems like he’s really giving it everything he’s got. Keeping a diary, writing letters, sending gifts.’
‘Is she a real person?’ A strange question, but HE seemed to know what I meant. Not a celebrity, in other words.
‘I think so, yeah. Doesn’t seem like a green door, anyway.’
An image, HE meant. Though it’s a term they use with psychedelics, too.
‘Isn’t that a lot of effort? Being in love at that age?’
‘Yeah. They act like it’s this huge deal. Not like us, right? Young people get involved out of a sense of obligation. It’s like we have to. Or because we’ve got nothing better to do.’ HE followed this with some total bullshit: ‘I’m not talking about you, of course. You’re special. You understand that, don’t you?’